Radiation-emitting devices are used for the treatment of cancerous tumors within patients. The primary goal of treating cancerous tumors with radiation therapy is the complete eradication of the cancerous cells, while the secondary goal is to avoid, to the maximum possible extent, damaging healthy tissue and organs in the vicinity of the tumor. Typically, a radiation therapy device includes a gantry that can be rotated around a horizontal axis of rotation during the delivery of a therapeutic treatment. A particle linear accelerator (“LINAC”) is located within the gantry, and generates a high-energy radiation beam of therapy, such as an electron beam or photon (x-ray) beam. The patient is placed on a treatment table located at the isocenter of the gantry, and the radiation beam is directed towards the tumor or lesion to be treated.
Radiation therapy typically involves a planning stage and a treatment stage. In the planning stage, an X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner (or similar device) is used to acquire images of a lesion. These images are used to accurately measure the location, size, contour, and number of lesions to be treated in order to establish an isocenter, a dose distribution, and various irradiation parameters in an attempt to irradiate the lesion while minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue.
The advent of 3D conformal radiation therapy (3DCRT) and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) has improved the ability to minimize this damage. 3DCRT and IMRT use multiple, intersecting, shaped radiation beams, each of which geometrically conforms to the shape of a tumor from the view point of the origin of the radiation beam (the “beam's eye view,” or “BEV”). Various types of devices are used to conform the shape of the radiation treatment beam to encompass the tumor along the radiation treatment BEV as it traverses the patient's body into the tumor. One such beam-shielding device is the multi-leaf collimator (“MLC”).
LINACs with MLCs facilitate delivery to a patient of radiation beams with arbitrary shapes and distributions. The MLC patterns can be defined during planning, and coupled with 3D conformal treatment planning techniques, they allow treatment plans to be more flexible and complex. Such MLC-based 3DCRT plans prescribe radiation field geometries tailored to fit the tumor's shape more accurately than previous, 2D block-shaped plans. As a result, higher doses can be targeted at the tumor, requiring tighter safety margins around the tumor to avoid damaging healthy tissue by exposing it to the higher, deadlier doses.
These capabilities have direct implications for radiotherapy treatment verification methods and, more specifically, on patient position verification because as radio-oncologists' dose irradiation volumes become smaller and more intricately sculpted to conform to the tumor, and the doses prescribed become higher, tumor position verification or tumor localization accuracy requirements become more critical. The result of misalignment, whether due to daily organ displacement (motion) and/or incorrect positioning of the patient on the treatment table, is that the conformal dose of radiation may not be delivered to the correct location within the patient's body. Because of the time constraints imposed during the treatment phase of the process, methods that provide fast, accurate, and reliable lesion alignment and displacement compensation data are of great benefit to a radiation technologist administering treatment.